Yahoo's $680m Reasons for Goto.com 2.0.

jolie time
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

If you just sold the ad exchange you founded in 2003 that does billions of ad impressions a day and clips a 10% ticket on the revenue, for $680M, as Right Media have done with Yahoo, you (the founder might) say : "This is fantastic news for both companies, Exchange members and the industry in general."

Fantastic news indeed. Overture 2.0. (Terry personally welcomed the Right team who they already had 20% of in a pls save me way : "Right Media employees, welcome to the Yahoo! family. We’re excited by your deep industry, technical, advertising and publisher knowledge, and look forward to working with a team of such high caliber and expertise.") For a second tranche investment, the valuation certainly skipped along very nicely.

Must say I love these ad exchange models (adbrite, blogads, right media) and often ponder who will create the same ad exchange downunder and in other regions where advertising is bought locally.

VentureBeat : "Right Media is notable because it is an ad exchange, where buyers of Internet ads (publishers) and sellers (advertisers) can find each other and negotiate prices with the efficiency created by a large marketplace.. is more transparent than Google’s platform for publishers.. It is growing quickly, and in October boasted two billion ad impressions a day being bought on it. Chief executive Mike Walrath told us at the time it is the largest such marketplace. It takes “less than 10 percent cut” as middleman from each transaction, which is not enough to scare customers away, but still enough to generate a healthy income. Walrath said at the time his biggest competitors are Microsoft and Google."

Semel himself on the Yahoo Blog : "We think supply and demand should be regulated by the marketplace, not a closed platform. Right Media provides a democratic model that empowers advertisers with all of these benefits. We think our open approach is a clear differentiator from others in the industry and will provide significant benefits to publishers and advertisers."

Interesting aside here via Om from a recently exYahooligan KickingPebbles.net discussing Yahoo Mail vs gmail (an experience I must concur to having exactly the same as, minus working at Yahoo;) : "I feel like a major ass writing this, for many reasons. When I sat down to write this initially, it was my first day not working for Yahoo! in 2+ years. I was inspired to write this following a long IM correspondence with a friend, comparing GMail and Candygram- my timing with having just left Yahoo!, of no influence on the disucssion. Of course my own impartiality and possible inclination to write “they suck!” for the sake of “they suck!” articles lingered in the back of my mind as an open question of personal integrity, abreast my honest and strong affection for Yahoo! the brand, the online media [something], and the organization of 10,000+ damn tallented folks worldwide… who I do miss working with daily (and pelting nerf rockets-at), dearly."

Extra : And kewl Chaser prank covered via techcrunch, in which they asked 10 rapidfire questions of Wikipedia's Jimbo Wailes (there's how you find out about your local news.) Any1 got the clip franky ? or will this be in an upcoming episode ? :) Chaser to Wales : "Fourth, Mac or PC - do you really give a shit?" Cam Reilly may be able to answer this.

"Indian outsourcers are one of Open Source's best friends."

wingsofdove
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Lots of work and deliverables today will not blog, much. Agree with Burnham : "Indian outsourcers are one of Open Source's best friends. Not only are they driving adoption of the products into enterprises (both overtly and somewhat covertly), but because everyone is hiring them as "experts", their endorsement of open source platforms is likely to start swaying the minds of a lot of internal IT types ("If it's good enough for the experts, it's good enough for us")."

Extra Link ; When Yahoo Founders turned down $3m each.

"Surely Google Won't Also Want to Own Every Single Search Vertical ?"

csi hilton
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Vertical search has always been one way of niching/avoiding The GOOG monster. So RedEyeVC has a very nice rap-up (from a VC's perspective) about what google is doing with its OneBox vertical search feature and how startups need to avoid competing on a keyword:keyword basis with Google.

RedEyeVC : "I think that vertical search engines can still succeed if they offer additional application-specific features/navigation that differ from traditional search-box functionality (like Krugle) or if they focus on syndicating their results across other sites (like Biggerboat). But Google's actions have real consequences for vertical search engines -- and I'm surprised that there has been more discussion around Google Co-op than Google OneBox. By implicitly determining a user's intent, Google is able to take standard queries and filter them to their vertically focused sub-sites. Am I missing something or does this have real impact on the vertical search space?"

It seems once a service has critical mass of unique/exclusive content, a strong community, and other 'proprietary' tools which make the service 'more than just search' - then startups have a chance. If there is one thing google hasnt done well (in addition to 'owning' verticals) it's in the glue that connects its services together. You cant search really in greader, you cant use blogspot in a clipmark way from a google search result, and if you find a airfare/property/car you want to "save", store, or use in someway, google doesn't help with that.

Google is a search engine with a keyword/contextual self service ad platform, with some web based office/productivity tools, an email service, and other cellbased originated independent products (which run across a few main programming languages, and what Herr Schmidt calls a supercomputer approach !!! - a nice business if u can get it) Will it replace car dealers, realtors, travel agents and the intermediaries that aggregate these "dumb" listings and provide (supposedly) a smarter consolidated search and other "empowering" consumer and selling tools. That often aim to solve specific economic problems in specific verticals.

If you end up being the type of service that google aggregates in its one box (or similar to how citysearch aggregate yelp) then that is a good sign, that you may not be approaching head-on competition with google, but rather sumo-leverage their traffic for your own economic gain, while they sell adwords against your scraped data.

Searching and finding is usually only the first step in what people are trying to do on the web. They want to subscribe, track, compare, clip, blog, buy and share with others. Google isn't omnipotent in the verticals, and if you can own the non search consumer glue around what people are looking for, that should only accelerate. Until google starts buying the vertical search leaders, anyway.

They do have an unlimited budget when it comes to such purchases. They could buy alot in the $25m-$250m (up to $500) in designated verticals. (travel, real estate, employment, shopping etc) Which is I guess back to the whole RedEyeVC blog post question - Can VC funded players get under the radar and build something of value before being chewedup, purchased or competed against and digested. We're all hoping so and verticals definitely have their own flavour, unique criteria for success outside pagerank/adsense...

Culpa Est Mea.

'Said one oyster to a neighboring oyster, "I have a very great pain within me. It is heavy and round and I am in distress." And the other oyster replied with haughty complacence, "Praise be to the heavens and to the sea, I have no pain within me. I am well and whole both within and without." At that moment a crab was passing by and heard the two oysters, and he said to the one who was well and whole both within and without, "Yes, you are well and whole; but the pain that your neighbor bears is a pearl of exceeding beauty."'

Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Source: The Wanderer.... "for if they return...."

On Self-Knowledge

And a man said, "Speak to us of Self-Knowledge."

And he answered, saying:

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.

But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.

You would know in words that which you have always know in thought.

You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.

And it is well you should.

The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;

And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.

But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;

And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.

For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."

Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."

For the soul walks upon all paths.

The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

Twitter Turns off their Killer App for Australian Users. (or do they?)

WowWow. fn Wow.

nice logo
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I'm just walking out the door,
checking the links on my blog work, and see on my Twitter badge, that Lachlan Hardy tweetrd that Twitter has TURNED OFF SMS SUPPORT FOR AUSTRALIA. Now I never use caps-lock on my blog.

And while it is still April, and there is a trend for April 1st pranks to get later and later. Evan Williams, Evhead, Obvious Crew, Biz Stone, must all be waay crazy. They've turned off SMS for Australian Twitter users. The press release says it (still rubbing my eyes, say it isnt true)

Twitter Blog : "Australian users please take note! If you currently use Twitter via your mobile device instead of over IM or the Web we have some news. Right now, Twittering via sms in Australia is more expensive than it needs to be—for you and for us. (bb - cant believe thats the excuse) Our short term solution is to suspend sms support for Australian users."


Damn, my short term solution was I had written on my hand to remember to recharge my phone today (hate the things) but twitter had made my phone usage all the better because I could sms-blog when I was out on the road / in a supermarket / at gym. Now f'all Australians use IM thru their Sidekick (heck they dont even sell Sidekicks here Obvious guys :(((( and Blackberries with hackedIM are for people with good corporate plans. The whole hook of Twitter was SMS-blog to friends and followers, with a badge and feedburner'd tweet onto your blog.

Ok well this service, Twitter is dead to me, until they turn back on SMS. And it would have been nice to have specified a time when it goes back on. Which makes one think it isn't anytime soon. So gameover twitter, i heart'd u, but like Big Brother will do to the couple ; "Our (MY) short term solution is to suspend (MY) sms (AND WEB) support for (TWITTER) Australian users"

(And to think the solution is as easy as one business development deal with one of many Telcos in this region that would die to be associated with a service like Twitter - Sensis, Telstra, Optus, Crazy John any number of startups... rant over, feeling hurt)

Update 1 : Frankyarr says the twitter number (I've also been using) works - Damn, if you're going to turn it off, turn it off. And vice versa. Let's see how it plays out. "twitter sms works fine for me on this number - +447781488126. i can send and receive" (if it is working because maybe I am paying the cost of an international SMS that is great fine, happy to pay thought i was anyway :))))

Update 2 : Except it is now showing in a badly designed roughly inserted text format a message : "SMS delivery is currently suspended while we move to a better Australian number. Meanwhile, you can still send updates from your mobile. Thx for your patience!" (BB : when people question the need to localise services and business models in a fitting unique way to region, this is a classic example.)

Update 3 : It's working for me see image with "from text" delivery line. Is this just breakup text twitter, or are we together for ever, for better or for worse, cross-platform agnostic, driven by sms-blogging lust ? (if it is just breakup text then why should i have a 140 sms maximum character parameter... may as well just use blogger or go to a chat room of people interested in web 2.0....)

Update 5 : And now Bebo (who is very strong outside US, incl lots of Aussies) have implemented (via Mashable) exactly the same Twitter like functionality. It would seem a feature all blog platforms will have.

Big Brother Has 12 Cars and a Couple on His Radar.

banas ford
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Intravenously fuelling myself with caffeine after being the point person on contracts all week. Yay some action there finally. 1 signature down, about 7 to go. Then I can build / do stuff.

Watched some big brother last night, which there is lots of great blogging on, with the humorous couple that arent allowed to behave as a couple, and the ex boyfriend (who the current boyfriend doesn't know about) acting up to his once paramour : the i was a bodybuilder, i'm now 'from sydney' lawyertard. Humiliation is the theme, and Big Brother also knows she likes the ex more than the current, even if she cant admit it.

What should happen is the current boyfriend (when there is a live cross) tell the nation he cant take it anymore and profess his love for Hayley. (a story they could tell at dinner parties for years to come) Or, What she should (really) do (first) is accept her feelings for the X and do the whole make fk, "you up for a pash" (as housemate tj says) with him. Big Brother make this happen. Give her a car or something. You have 12 in waiting.

The couple who together are boring in the extreme (what was that Jamie Durie show on 9 that used to rate where they redid houses in bondi and that shabby chic wannabe singer....? - the couple are very much in that mould) They would never have been allowed on the show otherwise ("quite introverts" other housemates refer to them as) So if they want to stay, option a is humiliation, or option b is sinful amour with x's.

(Also get rid of Bree and Fitzy they are so more than one season old. The appointment should only be for 12 months and non-recurring.)

OK I'm starting to sound like a contract again, gotta wipe that out, i have a house to pack up for a move, more caffeine, and a large product spec/.ppt for early week. Big Brother, follow thru on your mission to destroy the couple. nb Freudian analysis on this one, plssss. It's just TV. Oh and Steph is killing it in the diary room blog, a better read you won't get, blogging str8 from the post midnight live feed.

Behind Big Brother (who have a Saturday night 630pm-830pm live skype-in radio show vkewl): "Part of the contract with Drive.com.au (for 12 cars being given away), which is owned by Fairfax Digital, is that Gretel must talk about the website and mention how many cars are available online each time a car is given out." (online auto 2.0 is going to be waay big downunder in Q3-4 CY 07. AU Domain btw)

"If you want to create a successful community the social aspect should be the second reason people come to your website, not the first."

moleskine drive
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Strange it's Friday, and the Calacanis/Wired interview blowup has led to one of those long sums it up Buzzmachine posts : "Quotes need no longer be taken out of context. Isn’t that the greatest problem subjects have with how their words are treated? But that need no longer be a complaint. Why shouldn’t every quote, every snippet and soundbite, link to its context in the fuller interview?" (hyperlinks need to be smarter duh)

Moving onto Rails Envy quote found by nivi's delicious - "You can’t build a community, you have to grow one. Don’t assume that if you build it, they will come. Social websites have become over saturated on the Internet. If you want to create a successful community the social aspect should be the second reason people come to your website, not the first."

The second sentence is very pertinent to (what Im working on at moment) and anyone building a user generated content community. It becomes very obvious after you launch that you need for people to have a real reason to contribute content. (before launch there is always the 'viral marketing meetings' and hoping for the 'youtube effect' (even if youtube didnt immediately take off) Ala the delicious principle of tagging something (public/private) so you can remember it later. Even with high traffic growth you want the ratio of unique visits : quality user content posts to be as low as possible. (it should increase the traffic velocity)

If you are building a blogging/folksonomy/networking community around real estate, auto, finance, travel - "Build it and they will come'' (and want your anonymous unique home page visitors to join, then personalise, avatarise, share and write reviews, quality posts, ask and answer great questions - unless they have a personal/real life reason - it is not going to happen like that - except from spammers of course !) Think about when you last bought something and how google plus product specific forums plus some meta-searching, maybe some amazon reviews helped you with your purchase. That is the "use case" than in alot of cases is needing improving, not a "MySpace" where people talk about 20" blingwheelz as fun as that is.

This is why Yapta, as profiled by Techcrunch, dont cater to the "Myspace for Travel" pitch. Its much more Blue Dot (or delicious) meets kayak/mobissimo etc. ie It helps users get a better deal on their travel, through meta-aggregation and the ol handy firefox 'tag this' plugin.

TechCrunch : "The core of the Yapta service is a browser bookmarklet or addon that lets users “bookmark” fares that they find on major travel sites. At launch, ten airline and travel sites will be supported, many more will be added over time. See a flight you are interested in and bookmark it. The flight and fare information is then stored in your account at Yapta. Find a number of different flight options at different sites, and then go back to Yapta to compare them."

The only question is why I cant do the same for cars, property - allowing me to build up a collection of "items" I'm interested in purchasing, then aggregate prices (where applicable), ratings (if they exist or provide the tool) and reviews (ditto) around said object. If 50 other people had bookmarked, rated and reviewed the new BMW M3, and I had 10 other "rides" favourited (with comparable aggregated data) that is now helping the car buying process.

With property, this idea seems to be an extension of the "scrapbook", "watchlist" or "favourites" which newer real estate sites seem to be offering in an Ajax format next to listings. What you are storing is farely dumb however, it just remembers that you liked a house for sale enough to bookmark/click it. It doesn't aggregate any other "trail" of what other members have publicly annotated, any metadata around their behaviour and third party scraped data (user reviews in areas, outside.in type hyperlocal blog entries etc)

This is what I think Rails Envy means and is spot on when he says (ok back to work here) : "If you want to create a successful community the social aspect should be the second reason people come to your website, not the first."

Update : Just as I'm going back to work Brad Feld (along a similar line) mentions talking to another investor about "The Ultimate Travel Website" He also mentions about companies that innovate to start of with, then get bloated and dont ship, ok really back to work.

TheStreet 1.0 Buys StockPickr 2.0

Lifting Natalie Portman
Originally uploaded by jurvetson.

I've rambled for a while how I'm a big fan of high value verticals meet structured user generated content. And just as Alta Vista plucked CMGI funded RagingBull.com during 1.0 days, so too has Cramer's TheStreet picked up (remaining 0.2% heck we'll take the whole house) of StockPickr. This is a "no-brainer" to localise in geo-markets around stock markets. Australians primarily trade the ASX for example and there is no StockPickr equivalent here. Um, maybe I'm stating the obvious and should shut the fk up.

TechCrunch : "In January StockPickr announced an investment stake and partnership deal with TheStreet.com. It looks like both sides liked the deal; this evening TheStreet.com announced that they acquired the company."

Rupe to Feast on the Carcass of 1.0 Moguls.

Good to see the old wily panther, enjoying other media moguls struggle with the attack of the new. Found via Aust Newsagency Blog where Mr Murdoch himself writes a piece for forbes (with a West Wing speechwriter's assistance somewhere i assume - but heh the medium is the message, and the message is the medium:) :

"Take the type of media I know best--news. News is in more demand than ever, but the vast network of Internet-savvy news junkies want their news with several fresh twists: constantly updated, relevant to their daily lives, complete with commentary and analysis, and presented in a way that allows them to interact not just with the news but with each other about the news. They won't wait until six o'clock to watch the news on television or until the next morning to read it in isolation. This plainly provides a challenge for news providers but also an opportunity to be far more engaged with the audience."

The Loopt World of Big Brother.

So it's been a busy day of contracts and paperflow. If goog ever get the collaborative markup and contract space happening and integrated within gmail, beautiful ! Neat article on loopt (neat company in the right segment of the mobile space) who were baby funded by YCombinator, but now have their who's your daddy Sequoia funding.

Inc : "Last September, Loopt launched its cell phone software exclusively with Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) with 3.8 million subscribers. Boost has since invested several million dollars in a TV advertising campaign to support the launch. Altman also plans to partner with several major cell phone carriers, which will roll out the service in 2007. The company is adding staff and recently raised $5 million in Series A financing from powerhouse VC firms like Sequoia Capital"

Listening to : The awesome Mayaj's jjj monday hip-hop stream which starts out with krs-1 track. (wish more radio stations would allow you to post stream their shows from the week gone.) Reading all the latest on big brother.. just tuned into my first viewing.

Being at the Bottom of the Ladder is a State of Mind.

matching cabriolet
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

After having seen Melbourne Football Club win 12 out of 13 matches I went to at MCG last year, my and the team record this year is 0/4. Lucky, the Rye footy season started Saturday, as reigning premiers, I hope they have a better year than the Dees. On a Monday I'm also happy for "content hyper-syndication", which IBM thinks is going to be huge. Better put that in the business plan. I'm closing deals this week. It's a Monday and thats why I tell myself :)

Local Onliner : "IBM thinks the biggest growth is going to be experienced by content hyper-syndication, which is expected to grow 33 percent on a CAGR basis between now and 2010, resulting in $25 billion of worldwide revenues. At the same time, new platform aggregation will grow 16 percent to $50 billion."

Speaking of being happy and gaia on a Monday, great piece on Gigaom about the "biggest hangout on the web for teens" - which is going down the Asian flavoured let teenagers pay you for premium avatars business model : "Instead of monthly subscriptions, Gaia Online sells “rare items”— treasures, fantastically cool fashion accessories for player avatars, and so on— two offered a month for $2.50 each. Subscribers buy them via credit card, Pay Pay, cellphone—or cash on the barrel. (“We employ someone full time whose job is getting dollars and quarters” out of envelopes kids send them, Sherman notes.)"

"If I'm meeting (PBL CEO John Alexander) I'm certainly not pulling on the skinny-leg jeans and Topshop loafers."

ok seats
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

We did enjoy our summer board shorts without supervised management in a serviced office in the Como South Yarra @ ninemsn must be almost a decade ago (famously chosen by the Microsoft International HR $14m day spa guy Canizales - who selected an office 30 metres from his hotel room so he could "enjoy" Melbourne...)

Now sometimes "JJ" Johanna Jackman, the founding HR Manager - would come down from Sydney and ask me about the whole "surfie" thing and my underlying career aspirations - nudge, nudge. Fun times etc.

So Dot com and Web 2.0 have quite similar cultures - the difference comes in the "grown up" Web 1.0 companies who arent really web 2 and run large headcount, revenue and overhead businesses; Not cool enough to be a record label or movie studio, more modern/geeky than a ad agency. Probably most similar to a mid-high range Accenture consulting, and even traits of the law/investment bank 'what tie are you wearing' mentality with the related Patrick Bateman moments.

FT.com : "Until internet television, Hollywood never faced genuine competition. The enduring success of the leading entertainment companies has been largely due to their stranglehold on distribution. Without access to thousands of screens, few outsiders stood a chance. The emergence of DVD technology did little to loosen this grip on distribution. Video readily downloaded over the internet has cracked the cartel. The death of the Hollywood distribution model could be vividly seen when, a year ago, DreamWorks, once the most talked-about Hollywood studio, was quietly sold for $1.6bn. Within a few months, that same $1.6bn is what it cost Google to buy YouTube."

As much I hate praising them and I dont think they have it right (too decentralised/cell based not enough glue, but getting better) Google have the right weighting between engineering/product, new releases/deals, back end infrastructure, legal aggressiveness, hiring best people. Free Food. I've totally digressed here.

Mr Schmidt quoted on the transcript which is always a great read for google's last quarter - can anyone imagine a traditional media company reporting/delivering or more specifically "viewing" their business in this way ? (via SeekingAlpha): "The complementary strategies, things like offline ads, some of the new ad initiatives, YouTube again complements our core search and ads business. There are other examples, obviously our enterprise business. They are working, too. I'm personally impressed with the way in which the management team and employees of the company have managed the growth from an operations perspective. You can imagine the dials and everything else that has to be tuned here, and yet we have been able to take advantage of the opportunity before us, and I believe we will be able to do that for the foreseeable future."

Um, I've gone off on a google tangent, oops I think I may have spent 2 years too long in front of my computer (combined with not living in cement metropolis) so when I read this piece in The Australian (which somehow this long pre-amble is supposed to set the scene for), about Prada's recruitment of male focus group candidates, incl an "advertising" representative from ninemsn. I sorta couldn't believe what I was reading.

(Although I think it may be the journalists' Georgina's Safe predisposition to the topic which caused that. how many shoes do you really have georgina ? Is it just me, its Friday, I watched all of series 2 or whatever was on alluc.org last night of the wire, so I havent slept much at all...)

Suffice to say I won't mention the lack of Real R+D going on in Australian media. There are much more important things to discuss in The Australian : "If I'm meeting (PBL chief executive and managing director) John Alexander I'm certainly not pulling on the skinny-leg jeans and Topshop loafers, although I'll do that if I'm going out with web developers," Curtis says. "Professionally it's very much a suiting rotation of about 14 or 16 suits, although I can complement them with something like a Fendi belt or a Gucci shoe."

JA on a (PE)ople tip - "One of the key reasons CVC decided to invest was the quality of our people. You are our biggest asset." (The Age)

Congratulations Hitwise

997-CUPR
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Congrats bigtime to Hitwise crew - Adrian Giles, Andy Barlow and other masters of the stats universe like Mr Gav Appel, who along with Seek and Carsales, are the Internet success stories of Web 1.0 from Australia. Hitwise did it globally too, total props, thru a unique technical innovation, smart VC, and great execution in sales, hr and expansion. $240M US (bought by Experian, - UK based multi-billion dollar company). Congrats to Adrian and Andy especially. Inspirational.

The Social Media 1% Rule can also be 0.2%, 0.16% or 4.6% - triangulate how u will.

theyre new
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Some interesting Hitwise stats from the Web 2.0 conference via AustralianIT on The 1% (Horowitz?) rule in which 1% of site visitors to a social media site upload content (reviews, images, videos etc) : By definition 100% of site visitors consume/read/view this content (and another 10% may reactively comment/reply/vote etc)

It seems 1% may be 7-10 times too high in alot of cases (YouTube, Flickr) but understated by 4 in other cases. (Wikipedia - which is ironic given it is much harder to upload content on Wikipedia than flickr or youtube) Depending on your business model and investors, take your pick of assumptions or triangulate your web based spreadsheet.

Hitwise Research on the 1% Rule.
- YouTube : 0.16 percent of visits are by users uploading video.
- Flickr : 0.20 percent are to upload new photos.
- Wikipedia : 4.6 percent of all visits to Wikipedia pages are to edit entries on the site.
- Web 2.0 category : Visits to Web 2.0-style sites have spiked 668 per cent in two year.

"Hey, Yahoo, take a hint from Google: Spend your money on making great product."

bahumbug
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Business 2.0 have done a nice on the fly analysis meets transcription of the Yahoo conference call. This observation could be levelled at a few major publishers, who often understand agencies and marketing budgets, but not engineering/product/hit-making ; "Oh great: CFO Sue Decker says Yahoo's going to be launching a new marketing campaign. Does anyone remember its last big "Life Engine" campaign? And did it do anything to boost Yahoo's search business? Not that I can recall. Hey, Yahoo, take a hint from Google: Spend your money on making great products, not trying to market them."

It's All About The Presentation in Melbourne.

me + alex quit google. (dodgeball forever!!!!)
Originally uploaded by dpstyles.

Good to see a partial Melbourne based/originated team Tonic (there was a bar of the same name in South yarra yah ?) be bought by google for its 2.0.ppt'ness. Wonder if there is a Mountain View relocation to happen, or will Melbourne get it's first little micro-tweetrd googleplex ? There needs to be a gin'n'tonic meetup, get it. Caffeine not yet fully effective. Do not try this at home nor your office.

Google Blog : "Tonic, which we've just acquired, is based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. They have some great technology for presentation creation and document conversion, and it will be a great addition as we add presentation sharing and collaboration capabilities to Google Docs & Spreadsheets."

From the now redirecting Tonic site (which makes me ponder when jotspot will relaunch and not be dodgeballed) : "Tonic Systems is a San Francisco-based company that provides Java presentation automation products and solutions for document management - Tonic Systems Builder, Tonic Systems Filter, Tonic Systems Transformer, Tonic Systems Viewer, and JarJar Links. Features of their products included text extraction for indexing documents, presentation creation capabilities and document conversion tools."

100 Megabits Never Ever for Australia.

Sitting here on throttled ISP speeds, barely able to work, gigaom is lobbying for 100 megabits in the US, which they'll get. Here in Australia we have meetings about the next meeting, and deal with non-core information. Anything to avoid risk, innovation and a punt. Thats why the niks of this world are using free fast wifi in the press corner of the web2 expo. Smart people learn to get around the default situation. which is our internet sux. Speed is not a defining characteristic of local change either : thats the beauty of oligopolies, monopolies, and not enough 'capita.

Gigaom : "Can Americans dream about a day when they get a 100-megabit-per-second broadband connection, delivered over fiber? FTTH Council, says yes, and is pushing the US government to adopt a 100 Megabit Nation policy. The Council says that we have the technology, and the carriers (and cable providers) have the networks to make it all a reality - with a little pressure from Washington D.C.. My simple argument is that what x86 was to the PC era, bandwidth is to the broadband era. The more bandwidth we have, the more innovative ways we will find to use it, thus creating another cycle of innovation."


Reading the Executive Rich BRW issue last night (a good read on the top 200 local execs re : how to use options as a CEO in financial services, private equity backed Co's and technology to make $$$), and screened the Foad Fadaghi pre-amble piece on Labour's proposed broadband rollout downunder - which has a minimum of 12 megabits per second (which is supposed to trump Liberals which show just how low the bar here is), with the legacy but not yet really implemented/marketed by Telstra et G9-11 pals adsl2 technology can only go to 24 megabits.

So the best Australia can hope for is, once there is an election promises will be made on both sides, The Future Fund will be raided, and in a couple years something will be sold to us that is at least 5 to 8 times slower than the minimum US speeds, which will also be sold to consumers at much higher prices downunder. Obviously it will be near impossible for any Australian originated, Australian based post-Youtube companies to come from here, or if they do - Total Respekt ! - If you can't use it, how can you imagine it, then turn it into a business. As Harold Mitchell says Australian govt has spent $9B billion on 6 submarines and 24 superhornet aircraft.

The fkn superhornets better be fkn superhornets ok. Typically these types of government purchases - whether they be helicopters, or state governments with trains - they buy product that is out of date, deal with bad suppliers, overpay, wait along time for delivery, then the brakes dont work and the local public train service doesnt work reliably liked happened in victoria last year;

"Sorry sir, we didnt know after you spent billions that you wanted the brakes to work, let me get you an engineer. Does anyone know where Bill is ?"

As for submarines, well maybe they will have Telstra's 3.5G wifi. Ok u can tell im pissed Optus has throttled my speeds. Maybe Fits was right and we need the Original OG, Keating. His 80's Raybans have gone full circle to be cool again. He would build it out, just to knife Hawke. Nup Telstra, ACCC and the Amigos, each earning good coin and most millionaires in their own right will just keep on with their pissing matches. The entrepreneurs in the house will keep extending their credit cards, savings, little bits of revenue to fund rollouts.... (end rant where Ben remembers deep down he once did a politics degree.. i blame duncan riley for this.. it's just fast broadband for telstra, private equity and government isnt that much coin.. 2/3rds of the Qantas deal, and it's all debt/leverage anyway, it pays itself back already.....)

Ari, Deltas Mum, Dicko + Bruce the New Pirates

Jeremy Pivens playing Ari on Entourage, Dicko playing Dicko on Australian Idol after his stint at McAvaneyland, along with every bricksnsnortar "talent scout" at record labels (and deltas mum), will be happy to hear that marketing in the entertainment industry has been quantitatively proven.*

The art practised in bathroom stalls, Vip club crevices, and the dollars spent on roadblocking TV schedules, 3 minute morning radio plugs with bombed out stars, it is all effective. NYT says so. Marketing entertainment products works. As Harvey Weinsten said about Grindhouse's bad opening weekend; If the audience don't like 2 movies for the price of one, double your revenue by releasing the 2 films separately and taking the special/deleted features from the DVD and add it to the main. Harvey presto.

* Just because a sample group has a higher propensity to click on a song designated as 'popular' by the display of number of downloads, I'm not sure justifies the thesis. But the authors already knew what they wanted to prove, which was really add to the greater understanding of not just marketing, but history, philosophy and the future. I can see Ari pitching Mel Gibson the outline now.

NYT : "Our desire to believe in an orderly universe leads us to interpret the uncertainty we feel about the future as nothing but a consequence of our current state of ignorance, to be dispelled by greater knowledge or better analysis. But even a modest amount of randomness can play havoc with our intuitions. Because it is always possible, after the fact, to come up with a story about why things worked out the way they did — that the first “Harry Potter” really was a brilliant book, even if the eight publishers who rejected it didn’t know that at the time — our belief in determinism is rarely shaken, no matter how often we are surprised. But just because we now know that something happened doesn’t imply that we could have known it was going to happen at the time, even in principle, because at the time, it wasn’t necessarily going to happen at all."

Moving onto hedge funds, found via the aptly titled infectious greed, is Tom Wolfe on that new plush Conde Nast blog (who are doing some really good web design with Wired, i wonder who the designer in there is ????) with a hilarious observational piece of the top of the economic tree as defined by previous financial year income - The Hedge Fund Trader (this para on their wifes) who like to think of themselves as Pirates. (reminds me of that joke about what happens when you get Keith Richards, A Hedge fund trader, a blogger and a PHd research student in a room)

Portfolio : "The twinkies who have their eggs fertilized by their husbands’ sperm in a laboratory, creating embryos for implantation in the wombs of surrogate mothers who are paid to manufacture children for delivery in nine months, since why on earth should any wife whose husband is worth a billion or even $500 million have to endure the distended belly, bilious mornings, back cramps, not to mention a cramped social life, to end up with her perfect personal-trainer-sculpted boy-with-breasts body she has spent thousands of sweaty hours attaining, ruined … tempting her husband to survey all the little man-eaters out there, including those former wives who used to meet regularly at the Boxing Cat Grill until it burned down, whereas the current wives leave their husbands catatonic before the plasma TV and meet three or four times a week at one local bar or another and drive home in their Hummers and bobtail Mercedes S.U.V.’s, bombed out of their minds, while waiting for the baby to come from the factory—"

Today's Listening (as isp has throttled my speeds and made me very blog/photo/twit/video ineffective i've gone back to a stash of Web 1.0 CD's i had stored away) : Sean Coombes, PDaddy, PDiddy, Sean John etc and The Bad Boy Crew.

BadboyforLife
I'm the definition of: half man, half drugs
Ask the clubs - Bad Boy, that's whassup
After bucks, crush crews after us
No games, we ain't laughin much
Nothin but big thangs, check the hitlist
How we twist shit, what changed but the name?
We still here, you rockin wit the best
Don't worry if I write rhymes - I write checks (hah!)
Who's the boss? Dudes is lost
Don't think cause I'm iced out, I'ma cool off
Who else but me? (who else?) And if you don't feel me
that mean you can't touch me, it's ugly, trust me
Get it right dawg, we ain't ever left
We just, moved in silence and repped to the death (yeah)
It's official, I survived what I been through
Y'all got drama, "The Saga Continues..."

"All of us working on Twitter are big Ruby fans, but.. this isn’t one of those relativistic language issues. Ruby is slow."

I've been spending alot of time on back end scaling (after many international conference calls i think* i have a solution), and it's always nice to hear in a bad way that even the best have similar problems. A twitter developer on Radical Behaviour Blog : "The problem is that more instances of Rails (running as part of a Mongrel cluster, in our case) means more requests to your database. At this point in time there’s no facility in Rails to talk to more than one database at a time. The solutions to this are caching the hell out of everything and setting up multiple read-only slave databases, neither of which are quick fixes to implement. So it’s not just cost, it’s time, and time is that much more precious when people can[’t] reach your site."

Found via Tbray.org which has another interesting tweet soundbite : "I had an off-the-record conversation recently and learned a whole bunch of things about the Twitter/Rails situation. Holy shit, that’s a scary load they’re trying to stand up under and there are some hurtin’ engineers."

* Om's quote on his new found+read blog is 'money' ; "Last nine months have been a lesson in humility, and a harsh realization that starting a company is for those dumb enough to climb a rock face standing perpendicular to terra firma. Confusion, constant second guessing, manic multitasking and perma-smile are new emotions. Caffeine has become my best friend. Sleep and I have broken up."

GOOGs 10% Phone Replies vs 10 Times Revenue Acquisitions Multiple

RUFhollyHECK
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I just twittered, well tried to (140 characters later) I'm "heading off to rye after a boston call about pune tech nirvana. slack afternoon of beach walk, latte, afl on radio. my isp has throttled me." Just as I get halfway into the final ep of The Wire series 1 (no HBO downunder) the speed dies. Feels like dialup speed.

So GOOG have upped the ante again with 1-2-no-3 point 1 billion 10x times revenue (vs 100 times multiple as youtube) acquisition of Double Click, and their head of acquisitions seems to like the phone as much as I do : "Google has about 15 people working on acquisitions that meet with dozens of companies a week, Ullah said. Mountain View, California-based Google responds to every e-mail pitching a company, while phone calls have a 10 percent response rate."

Interesting/useless Porsche fact from CarandDriver : "Hidden within the new Boxster S’s mid-section is the same 295-horsepower 3.4-liter flat-six that powered the Cayman S last year and the 911 series until 2002. Okay, it’s not exactly the same as the 911-spec engine as the 911 had a higher compression ratio (11.3:1 versus the Boxster’s 11.0:1). That bump in compression is the likely reason that that old 911 engine made 300 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque as opposed to the Boxster S’s 295 horsepower and 251 pound-feet of torque."

"So you really want to increase the revenue, apply the multiple, to increase the valuation. So what is the typical multiple in this industry"

Union Square Ventures Blog : "The capital efficiency of web services means that few experienced entrepreneurs are going to take a large investment before testing their services in the market. Once the services have proven themselves the entrepreneurs may choose to sell early rather than take the dilution of subsequent rounds."

Clipping the MySpace Ticket

idTakeIt
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I've always believed widget companies will ultimately have to pay the distribution owner. Nothing is free. So I agree with Dare (it's not like i can distribute content/tools onto non community sites without paying - even if this is my 'corporate portal' background coming out - Like all media there are swings and roundabouts on who pays who when it comes to content/distribution and value/revenue/cost equations. real estate is realestate) :

Carnage4Life : "If I were PhotoBucket, I'd work with MySpace and either (i) agree on how MySpace gets a revshare of PhotoBucket ads shown on their site or (ii) make it easy for MySpace to filter out the embeds with ads (which are a minority) and allow other embedded media from PhotoBucket pass through. Considering that they are trying to flip their startup, the PhotoBucket crew would be wise to avoid going to war with the biggest traffic driver to their site."

kewl wired font. fuzzy socializr logo.

friendster 2.0
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

The Friendster founder Josh Abrams on scaling technology the second time and why he hasnt taken big VC for his new post-evite meets next gen Friendster biz socializr, interviewed by Wired, whose new UI and fonts are very sexi (is it just me or is the socializr logo a bit fuzzy prob due to some low res conversion shrinkage it didnt come out in the wash right issues?)

"At Friendster we had three big venture capital firms, we had a whole bunch of people on the board and we hired a whole bunch of executives who had great resumes. Yet we went years without fixing the core technology problems. Years. Which is pretty crazy. We didn't add music, didn't add events, which were the really obvious winning additional features that I was excited about. And we did do a lot of weird, poorly integrated partnerships throughout those years as well: with Eurekster for search, with Pandora and Grouper for media, with GloPhone for voice over IP and none of these things were even really well integrated. Considering that the site still wasn't very fast and still had bugs, and there was still so much opportunity to do more core things, more things really related to what people thought Friendster was about and what they used it for, (doing partnerships) was not good prioritization and focus."

It's Just a Bunch of Links, CutnPaste Text and Someone Else's Pics.

Harvey Weinstein on Grindhouse : "I don't think people understood what we were doing. The audience didn't get the idea that it is two movies for the price of one. I don't understand the math, but I want to accommodate the audience."

Francois ex Feedster one of my favourite blogs talks about the classic feeds, personalisation, folksonomic tools and attention issues that still aren't solved or touched on by great tools like greader : "First is the issue that most of what is out there is not that relevant to me (this is the 90%/10% rule, 10% of what is out there is relevant to me). While there are lots and lots of feeds out there (70+ million but current counts), the vast majority of them are not relevant to me. It is still a chore to find good feeds which are relevant to me. I usually come across them by word of mouth from colleagues, or one of the feeds I am reading refers me to other feeds. But we should be able to automate this process, good content should find me, once I have defined what good content is.Second is the issue of filtering the content is that is generated by my selected feeds (which I may be reading or not.) I would really like to be able to filter a selected batch of feeds using different methods such as topic, taxonomy, tags, clusters, terms, etc…" (Also see Brad Feld on Growth of Lucene, a very useful tool!)

CTR3 - RUF Cayman. fn A.


Autoblog : "RUF has the heart of its bigger and equally insane brother, the 911 RT12. Its 3.8L twin-turbocharged six delivers 700 horsepower and 656 lb-ft of torque, all of which is sent rearward via a rumored seven-speed sequential gearbox. Top speed? Figure around 224 mph. Can an assault on the Nürburgring by this earthbound cruise missile be far off?" (or try the new M3 : "First-ever BMW M3 with an eight-cylinder power unit, all-new V8 displacing 4.0 litres and developing maximum output of 309 kW/420 hp plus peak torque of 400 Nm/295 lb-ft at 3,900 rpm, maximum engine speed 8,400 rpm, optimum power and torque throughout the entire engine speed range.")


Internet Stock Blog on Google's P/E : "Overtime the P/E ratio has dropped significantly from over 100 down to 47, as you can see from the chart below. With a quick comparison you can see that the current P/E ratio makes Google an attractive buy. For comparison I picked Yahoo (YHOO) as a direct competitor and EBay (EBAY) as a strong internet name. Yahoo trades with a P/E ratio of 61 with negative year over year earnings growth. The new Panama ad serving system will help Yahoo’s earnings but they are still trailing Google in search traffic. According to Alexa, Yahoo is the number one visited website with Google and MSN closely trailing at 3rd and 2nd respectively. EBay trades with P/E ratio of 43 and earnings growth estimated at 20% in 2007." (Also RRW on google dominating search incl verticals. Plus if u think google has all the money in the world check Paul Kedro's richest hedge fund traders. Damn that is a 30something job!)

Conan Obrien Harvard address : "After graduating in May, I moved to Los Angeles and got a three week contract at a small cable show. I got a $380 a month apartment and bought a 1977 Isuzu Opel, a car Isuzu only manufactured for a year because they found out that, technically, it's not a car. Here's a quick tip, graduates: no four cylinder vehicle should have a racing stripe. I worked at that show for over a year, feeling pretty good about myself, when one day they told me they were letting me go. I was fired and, I hadn't saved a lot of money. I tried to get another job in television but I couldn't find one. "

Interesting twitter research tool Twitterment about when keywords like "coffee" and "sleep" are mentioned. Wonder if it takes timezones into account or if we are all "American!". (calacanis23 with jeff jarvis or try PhotoMatt on Wordpress Sponsored themes, ads and google blackmagik) Final Series of 6Feetunder here which I finally watched earlier in week. Webbased, free easy...)

Local Onliner have great news and analysis on the local space. This profile on opentable which we dont have in Australia is esp interesting : "OpenTable has landed 6,500 mostly high-end restaurants, mostly in the U.S. and Canada, but with some also in Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico and the Caribbean. There is a one-time $1,200 fee for hardware and software, a maintenance fee which runs $200-$300 per month, and $1 per reservation. In addition to the logistical help for seating diners, participating restaurants take advantage of the system to build up its customer base and develop customized promotions for new diners, repeat diners, diners who haven’t come for awhile, etc." (Also see LocalOnliners' profile of NBC affiliates move into localUGC (Om says Comcast is getting biggg): "WCAU-TV, NBC’s owned & operated station in Philadelphia, is launching DigPhilly, a city site, reports today’s Wall Street Journal. The site isn’t yet up-and-running, but a teaser features buttons for “learn,” “do,” “share,” “find” and “shop.”)

QT on Starpulse : "To be honest, it was a big surprise to me. I didn't even know that Bruce Willis was in Robert's movie until I was on the set, and I was like, 'What's he doing here?' And then I saw his green beret and army fatigues and it hit me -- he's not just visiting the set, he's in our movie! "And neither of us realized that Nic Cage was in Rob Zombie's fake trailer until we read about it. But obviously they really wanted to be in it, and they're great." (see gigaom on enterprise skype... back to Grindhouse and subculture 70's : "Orgy of the Dead" offered the audience an insurance policy just in case the graphical content of the film drove them to the point of insanity while "Scream Bloody Murder" introduced us to "a nice young man" with "an unquenchable thirst for blood" and boasted "13 uniquely gruesome deaths." Having the opportunity to compare these to the fake trailers in "Grindhouse" was a blast and in many cases I found the similarities to be spot-on in terms of ridiculousness.")

Great job for a developer in Weagles land@Perthnorg : "Norg Media is looking for a PHP developer with passion. We want someone who can help us spread the norg meme around the world. "

Rev2 on 2.0 Education Apps (JF catchup rsoon:) "Students can add their courses and use the tool to write down lecture notes for each of them (exactly why a desktop-based side would be useful, what if there is no wi-fi in the lecture rooms?). What I like about this is that they can then gather the notes in any format they like — PDF, Word, TXT, and the ability to e-mail it are all supported."

Startups should focus on share price, not valuation says VentureHacks. I'm off to close deals.

Watch Out for the Personal Bees on MySpace.

writer+actress
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

With TV on the background, it is amazing the amount of time now devoted between 630pm and 730pm to MySpace predators. (as well as that Ugly Betty song) It really is a great form of free marketing for the service which caters to teenagers rebelling against parents. Too neat. "So what is your marketing strategy ?" : "Oh, well we dont worry about TV advertising, because we are always being promoted in-show."

Technorati's acquisition of Personalbee was mentioned ages ago by blogs, but it's always interesting to hear the Founder's perspective, Mr Sifry : "For content creators and brands, recreational and professional alike, this will offer a whole other range of benefits. The Bee platform makes it quick and easy (turnkey, if you will) to create and deploy conversational and informative micro-sites full of dynamic and engaging blog posts, videos, photos, podcasts, and more. It allows these folks to foster communities quickly, and it'll give them the tools to monitor and manage the ebb and flow of information at their discretion."

Get It. Get It. Get It. Dont : Mad' Av Domain Flip Flopping.

carbonfibre roof
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Been waaay to busy. Meeting and exceeding my own manicness is the Evangelical of domainers Rick Schawrtz. Absolutely classic blog about the secret world of domain selection, optimisation and how to increase the value of a domain by 100 times sir. Yessir, giddyup just dont flip too early. Get With It goes the Ricky Lake Natural Born Domain Killas chant.

Home of the Domain King : "Johnson and Johnson figured it out. They own baby.com and a LOT more. See how they OWN this sector. How they CONTROL this sector. How that have positioned themselves to lead the next 100 years just like they have lead the past 100 years. THEY GET IT!! Then think what would be the consequences if their competitor got it!...

Bank of America owns Loans.com. THEY GET IT!
Barnes and Noble own Books.com. THEY GET IT!
Kraft owns CreamCheese.com. THEY GET IT!
JC Penny owns Gift.com. THEY GET IT!
Calvin Klein owns Underwear.com. THEY GET IT!"

Football and Startups Are Cruel but True Barometers of Performance

paris friends
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

MFC played exactly the same (up in first-awful 2nd-3rd qtr-slight comeback in last qtr) game they played the week before (and I'd picked Hawthorn after being at the last game) but it still hurts even if I'd managed expectations. Once Neitz went off 10 mins and 1 goal for him in (which before game Brock McLean had said Neita had been very vocal all week and encouraged them to follow his lead, once he went off, it was over)

Anyway, lots of compressed 4 day week matters to deal with. Closing the deals I started working on multiple days a week since September 06 that have taken many typical turns, but almost there. The challenge of a startup is so much more primal than corporate, but grass is always greener. As I often say/think it will all make sense in retrospect. We hope. I do. Just dont want to end up like Travis Johnstone, the 1997 draft pick, my favourite player too. With all the new breed of playaz coming out. It will all equalise, but that's a question of timing. And the benefit of funding and resources is ability to implement initiatives more quickly while pure bootstrapping is often treading water and not conducive to attacking play.

Will Price writes a good piece on boards, and decision making, which is another layer that as a corporate exec/bus dev dude you have no input in (past maybe the occasional presentation etc) but in your own business have to establish, manage and spend up to one third of your time on : ".. start-ups are fast paced and iterative; often board issues are event driven and pre-scheduled meetings often fail to coincide with the natural cycle of progress.."

Now I'm off to practise my Hawthorn theme song which I will be singing on Mollys AFL podcast sometime soon..

"i need to send u an nda for my new barbershop business."

bubbly market
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

So you may have seen on cable the B4Boring Barbershop movies, which was the other end of the spectrum of IceCube's Amerikkkas Most Wanted Album, which I still remember buying on vinyl, but there seems to be a winebar drinks meets cafe coworking meet secret handshake for pending vesting billionaires club; Barbershop 2.0.

Alarm Clock : "The first club is located in San Francisco's financial district. The membership packages range from $65 to $200 a month at three levels: Entry level "player," mid-tier "hitter" and high-end "mogul." These allow members unlimited salon services and extras, like products and VIP passes." : "We didn't go to Stanford to own a barbershop," agreed Heywood. "We went to Stanford to learn about creating a brand." (SFGate.com)

Scarlett's Micro-Persuasive Tweets M+A

bad grrrl
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

So the Maestro of Micro Persuasion is post April Fooln that twitter will be acquired : "Twitter had 100,000 users at the end of March. More important, the community is doubling in size every three weeks. That kind of hockey stick growth is the stuff of legends. We're talking ICQ and YouTube territory. They're not going to sit on the shelf for long."

Scarlett Johansson commenting on the potential Twitter acquisition says about her crush on Steve "I can't stand mind games," she says. "But I think you should be mysterious and flirtatious. You should always have some mystery in a relationship. You don't wanna know what the person's thinking all the time. And you don't want him to know what you're thinking all the time."

Scarlett doesn't mind a twit herself this non-journalist found while investing this filler rubbish during the quarter time break where the Tigers are going to be krushed by the Swans. So what are you doing now Scarlett ? : "Other than my ability to do the running man (dance) and the fact that I can sing all the words to Salt-N-Pepa songs? I think it's that I find beauty in unusual things, like hanging your head out the window or sitting on a fire escape."

Not to be left out Paris is also getting into Twitter. One of her one way followers messaged @parishilton : "You're so sexy ... I love you sexy, I really love you" To which Paris twittered back : "Hey, whore!"

"Guess what? No one pays $50-100K over the web.."

spawned twin
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Well it's Friday but feels like Good Saturday. Strange retail hours'n'all. Some vinteresting open source sales discussions I'm digesting.

Larry Augustin's Weblog : "All businesses have a natural organic revenue growth rate. The challenge with respect to that is twofold:
1) find the product & business model that maximizes that natural rate
2) execute on removing whatever are the natural limiters to that growth rate.

".. Limiters are the scalable part of that natural growth rate. For example, once you have the right product and know the right sales pitch, the limiter may be finding the right people to hear the pitch (e.g. sales leads).. When you try to force a business to grow faster than its natural growth rate you usually get into trouble; “unnatural acts” they’re called. Investors and management in any company are going to push the company to grow. That’s normal. But the push needs to be to maximize the natural growth rate, and not grow through unnatural."

AC/OS : "Guess what? No one pays $50-100K over the web. They almost never pay without meeting you. In other words, these big deals always cost more money to close, open source or proprietary."

Google's Per Square Foot Stealth Click Assault

1.0 v 2.0
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Oh it's Good Friday. How Good. Screenwerk delves into Google's quasi stealth Real Estate search meets Gbase initiative : "But this search –> OneBox–> vertical results environment is a central component of how Google is seeking to use Base to deliver richer vertical experiences via Google.com results. In this segment Google has a fundamental challenge in seeking to compete with Zillow and Trulia (or even Yahoo! RE), which are focused entirely on real estate. Yahoo! takes a “templated” approach to verticals, which makes them somewhat more scalable."

Also this week Google's MyMaps feature launched which is functionality which could easily be applied to Real Estate : "show me / let me upload - images, videos, reviews of specific streets/properties/businesses' on a Google Map." The end user is going to be more and more in control of their property buying and selling decisions.

Infectious Greed : "More broadly, is this an example of Google doing a Microsoft? Back in the bad days when Microsoft decided to beat up a would-be competitor it would release the product itself, while integrating it into the operating system (c.f, Internet Explorer). Given that the Google operating system is really search results themselves, how is releasing new features like My Maps (a service that compete directly with existing products like Platial and Frappr), and immediately adding all geo-indexed pages to local search, any different than what Microsoft used to do?"

To Virb is to Twit : 2b or not 2b ?

grindnmmm
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Virb, the minimalist hipsters myspace, are another crew daydreaming about twitter integration mutations : Brad@Virb : "I use Twitter, you use Twitter, we all Twit. What if there were a Twitter module on VIRBº? What if this said module acted as your 'tagline' in your profiles meta info? What if when you posted to Twitter from your Phone, IM, etc, your Virb profile would update to show that info as well? What if?!?!"

"Any Zillow user can now also add photos and information about any home and its neighborhood to the site."

1962-F330 TRI-LM
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Following vertical UGC angle, I'm always interested in what the Zillows of this world are doing covered in TechCrunch : "Every home in the Zillow database has its own dedicated page. Any user can now also add photos and information about any home and its neighborhood to the site. Users can also indicate if a home is for sale, and the asking price, as well as additional information. This is an expansion on user-generated content features added last September. Previously only the 600,000 registered users who claimed their homes or over 150,000 real estate agents could list a home for sale or post photos of the home. Now any registered user can list a home for sale and post an unlimited number of photos for the home, although the prime real estate on the listing is still reserved for a certified owner or agent. Bad photos and information can be flagged by other users."